Movies Archives - Page 25 of 53

17 December 202016 August 2021

WFF Review: ‘ A Shot Through The Wall’ addresses issues with policing in America with mixed results

Policing in America is broken. There’s no two ways about it; when black men and women are gunned down in the streets and in their homes and the police who kill them face little to no consequence, something is broken. A Shot Through The Wall seems keen to take on at least some of that brokenness in telling the story of a young Asian American police officer who accidentally discharges his weapon and kills a young black man on the other side of a wall.

16 December 202016 August 2021

WFF Review: ‘You Will Remember Me’ is a heartbreaking story anchored by a fantastic central performance

What must it be like to lose your memory? To lose all the experiences that make you, you. This is the trial faced by Édouard Beauchemin (Rémy Girard), a successful and noteworthy academic and his entire family as he goes through the onset of Alzheimer’s. This is not a disease that you suffer through alone; it affects everyone around you in profound ways. When you don’t recognize your own children or fail to be recognized by your own parent, there’s no way for that realization to land that is without an emotional punch to the gut.

You Will Remember Me (original title Tu Te Souviendras De Moi) captures this beautifully, and heartbreakingly, and with an excellent performance from lead actor Rémy Girard.

10 December 202019 April 2022

WFF Review: ‘Souterrain / Underground’ is one of the best Canadian films of the year

Few professions feel so fraught with peril as that of the miner. Each trip into the depths of the planet brings with it fears of explosions and collapses and men trapped for days without food or water. Souterrain (Underground), the new film from Sophie Dupuis, explores these fears with by following a group of miners in the lead up to an explosion in their mine.

9 December 202022 February 2021

Review: ‘Safety’; The first Disney+ sports movie is a safe bet

There are a few subjects more perfectly suited to the medium of film than the sports story. Sports provide a built-in context for storytelling: a team that functions as a surrogate family, conflict baked in, and fans and supporters alike to help move the plot along. In terms of setup, they are effectively unmatched. Sports movies provide a framework upon which you can hang a story about characters overcoming odds and achieving greatness, either professionally or personally.

Ray “Ray-Ray” McElrathbey’s story is seemingly also perfectly designed for the cinema. After gaining a full scholarship to Clemson University to play football, he ends up also taking custody of his eleven-year-old brother Fahmarr after his mother relapses. There’s a lot of potential for story and character there, and the resulting film does its best –for better and for worse– to tell as much of it as possible.

7 December 20202 January 2021

Review: ‘Wolfwalkers’ beautiful Irish fairy tale is one of the best animated features of 2020

If there was once magic in this world, then progress has likely snuffed most of it out. Our relentless expansion into the spaces where Mother Nature lives destroys our ecosystems and in many ways the wonders of this world. This is the conflict in Wolfwalkers, the new AppleTV+ exclusive from Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon.

It’s the mid-1600s, and the English are in Kilkenny to expand the empire and force their rule on the Irish. The city is being expanded, and the woods next door are being logged for resources to do it. The problem is the deadly pack of wolves who make the forest their home, who defend it at all costs. This is the reason Bill is in the city, a hunter by trade from Yorkshire, he lays traps in the forest to try to make it safe for the men working. What few realize is that there is something more in the forest.

3 December 202015 December 2020

Review: ‘Mank’ is a love letter to old Hollywood

The visual language of cinema has changed a lot since the first movies were produced, but one thing they retain is the ability to affect the people. Citizen Kane, widely regarded as one of –if not the– best films of all time, is a thinly veiled look at the life of William Randolph Hearst, and not a kind one.

The authorship of the screenplay of Citizen Kane has been a controversy for decades now. The story was initially conceived of by Welles and Herman Mankiewicz, but who wrote it? Welles? Mankiewicz? I don’t know the answer to this question but Mank, the latest film from David Fincher supposes that Mankiewicz wrote it nearly entirely, and tells the story of that man’s life during the time that he was writing it.

Is that accurate? I don’t know, but it makes for a hell of a story.

2 December 202015 December 2020

Review: ‘Godmothered’ has its heart in the right place

If there’s one thing we need in 2020, it’s movies with a good heart. Godmothered is one of those movies even if it takes the safest route to get there.

26 November 202015 December 2020

Review: Canada’s Academy Award contender ‘Funny Boy’ has a standout lead performance

Deepa Mehta is known for directing thoughtful dramas that explore the conventions of the world, and how people don’t fit into them. Funny Boy, adapted from the novel of the same name by Shyam Selvadurai, is another of these films. Following the life of Arjie, a young gay man growing up in Sri Lanka, in a culture that does not accept homosexuality.

It is a thoughtful film and one that will be important to anyone who is seeking acceptance in a society that doesn’t accept them. It also tells a story we’ve seen before but pitched against a backdrop of the tensions between the Tamils and Sinhalese peoples that eventually led to the Sri Lankan Civil War.

23 November 202015 December 2020

Review: ‘Black Beauty’ updates a classic

It’s strange to think we might be in a world where there are people who haven’t seen a Black Beauty movie. Anna Sewell’s novel was a runaway smash hit when it was published in 1877, and has been adapted to the screen no fewer than four times. This most recent adaptation takes the story, we all know and love and transplants it from the United Kingdom to the United States, and from 1877 to 2020.

What makes a classic story a classic story though is that you can tell it any way you want, and adapt it to any time you want, and it will still teach you the same lessons. Black Beauty has always been more than just a simple story of a boy and his horse, and the ideas of kindness and loyalty that the book originally championed are still here in this new adaptation.

20 November 202015 December 2020

Review: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ brings us powerful performances by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis

When Chadwick Boseman passed away this summer, it cast a new light on all of his recent work. Not only did he work nearly constantly while also suffering from stage four cancer, but he also took the time to inhabit meaningful African American characters and to bring African American stories to the screen. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom has a hell of a lot of expectations, being both produced by Denzel Washington and adapted from the August Wilson play of the same name, and that’s before you consider that it is Boseman’s last film.

So it’s a good thing that its a good movie then.

18 November 202015 December 2020

Review: ‘The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two’ is another fun holiday romp for Kurt Russell

Here’s where I admit that I never watched The Christmas Chronicles. The response, at the time, was mixed and very generally speaking Christmas movies in November are not my favourite thing. Now that there is a sequel coming out I took the time to watch them both and you know what? You guys were wrong. The Christmas Chronicles is delightful, and while it definitely loses something by being a sequel The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two is too.

16 November 20201 October 2021

Review: ‘The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special’ is a fun ride through Star Wars history

The Star Wars Holiday Special is, in a word, infamous. It has all the hallmarks of a cheap TV cash in, including guest stars and musical numbers, but over time it has become a cult classic. First traded on VHS bootlegged from TV, and more recently traded around the internet via sharing sites and BitTorrent.

When Disney+ was announced to launch with a large cross-section of all of the vast libraries of film they own including an entire section devoted to Star Wars, many hoped that the Holiday Special would be cleaned up and released. Those hoes have not been answered, but Disney did hear the fans because instead, they have created The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, which takes some of the elements of the original, updates them with the new characters, and then uses a magical MacGuffin to take a ride through the history of Star Wars.

It is, to put it simply, a lot of fun.

13 November 202015 December 2020

Review: ‘The Life Ahead’ is a showcase for Sophia Loren and newcomer Ibrahima Gueye

It would be easy for the story of an ageing former prostitute who looks after the children of other prostitutes, and who forms a bond with a young Senegalese boy, to be a little too saccharine. In the hands of a lesser director, or a with a lesser cast, that might certainly be the case. As it stands the film toes that line but doesn’t cross it, thanks largely to Sophia Loren and young star Ibrahima Gueye.

12 November 202011 November 2020

Review: ‘The Real Right Stuff’ revels in the heroism of the first American astronauts

Recently, in reviewing the recent Disney+ / National Geographic series The Right Stuff, I commented that while it was competently made, the new adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s seminal book didn’t really bring anything new to the table, or the story. In hindsight, that may have been unfair. It’s true that the story is not new and that I have seen it before, but it did at least bring us the story of seven men rather than seven heroes.

The Real Right Stuff, a documentary about the same seven men and the Mercury Space Program, is in some ways a perfect follow up to that series. Using previously unreleased stories, audio recordings, and footage, it takes an in-depth look at the first American men to fly in space and what they had to go through to get there, and casts them once again as heroes.

In effect, the mini-series and this documentary form two parts of a whole. The former giving us a closer look at the men themselves, and the latter giving us a more complete overview of the mercury program itself.

10 November 20207 November 2020

Review: ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ has great performances from Glenn Close and Amy Adams, but doesn’t elevate itself to being something special

Appalachia is a region that has an image on the world stage that is coloured by stereotype. Poor white people. Bootlegging, moonshining, drug running, and everything that leaps to mind when you think of the movie Deliverance. It is, of course, more than that. There are good people there and culture that has a deep respect for family and loyalty.

Left behind in recent years as the industry that once drove the region gives way to resources being imported, and jobs drying up. There’s a vast amount of interesting societal issues at play in the region, and one that I am sure is fascinating to read about in the book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Written in 2016 by JD Vance, the New York Times best-selling book has proven divisive, with fans and detractors alike claiming it either knows everything or is already out of date.

Unfortunately, much of the examination of class struggles in the region is basically ignored by this film.

Awesome Friday!

Category: Movies